In the bad old days, when Josh Rabinowitz, a music producer at Young & Rubicam in New York, needed to present musical ideas to a creative, hed run down to Colony Records on Broadway and search through the compact disk bins. Sometimes he knew exactly what he wanted; other times, hed have only a vague idea. Occasionally, he didnt have a clue.
It was a time-consuming process, he admits. And since time means money, then as now, it is no surprise that Rabinowitz is excited by four words that have cut down on his visits to Colony: on-line music delivery.
Its just great, says the producer. On one recent project, I was at the editing facility late at night and needed to download 15 to 20 seconds of music. We simply found it by searching the Internet. Then we put up a rough cut of the music against the picture. It was that easy.
Indeed, thanks to the World Wide Web, Rabinowitz and other creatives are lately doing their jobs a lot faster and more efficiently. Speedy delivery of music has been possible for a while through expensive ISDN lines. Now, however, rapidly changing technology has made it possible to hear and download sample music tracks through regular modems.
As a result, such stock music libraries as Megatrax Production Music in Hollywood and Who Did That Music? in Los Angeles have been making their libraries of tracks available over the Internet for production-quality downloading. Sound design outfit Phil Rubin Music in New York City is offering custom tracks on its Web site. Other music and sound houses, such as tomandandy and Bang, both bicoastal, are considering the same service.
The result: audio and postproduction professionals have 24-hour access to top-quality audio and music tracks for spot jobs. In the past, when someone would say Acome up with musical ideas, youd bring in a pile of stuff featuring 20 different things, recalls Rabinowitz. Youd be juggling DATs, tapes, and CDs. Now you can just surf the Web and download the samples you need.
Music houses are moving quickly to take advantage of the changes in technology. The Who Did That Music? sound librarys on-line catalog was recently introduced on its Web site (www.whodidthatmusic. com), for instance. This upgrade gets us one step closer to implementing a Amusic on demand service, says Dain Blair, owner of the company, a division of Groove Addicts, an L.A.-based music and sound design house.
The Who Did That Music? site has been completely remodeled to accommodate a secure online music delivery system and showcase an easy-to-navigate music search and retrieval system that features audio samples. The Internet makes our library accessible 24 hours a day and gives us the ability to debut new releases even before the CDs are shipped to our clients and distributors, explains Cindy Rosmann, general manager of Who Did That Music? s library. With new music being added constantly, our clients can easily search and sample the very latest music with just a few keystrokes.
No Limits
Music and sound houses claim that the possibilities are becoming limitless. An ad agency is able to call us and say they need something in a Caribbean flavor, observes Frank Molina, a producer at Bang. We can create sound files and then they hear our reels over the computer. It cuts down on having to send out tapes.
For those supplying music and sound, it is a golden opportunity to introduce agencies to new talent and old tracks with a minimum of fuss and cost. Megatrax, for instance, recently made its entire 5,000-track library available over the Internet by using Liquid Audio streamlining and downloading technology.
We have a production music library of 65 CDs of original music in a variety of styles, from classical to electronica and big band, observes Steven Corn, VP/general manager, who says that his companys Web site gets about 100,000 or more hits, or visits, a month. Its pretty steady, he reports. And were being used all over the place. Having our library on the web just increases our exposure. Anyone can go to our Web site and hear a full-length selection and they can download it at preview quality for free for demonstration purposes.
The situation is similar at Phil Rubin Music. Weve become a multi-media company, which was an actual extension of being a music house, so it was natural for us to put downloadable music on site, says Rubin. And now we get a lot of requests for information.
About a year ago, his company did the music for bumpers for New York-based Air Media, an online wireless news service. They heard about us through the Web, he says. Then all our work was done through e-mail. Theyd call us and say, AWe need a bumper for the stock market or sports, and wed email it to them. We never met with them once.
Downloading music can not only help in the search for a selection or a supplier; it can also simplify the licensing procedures. Explains Corn: You could be a client who is not near one of our CDs [of library music] because youre working in an editing bay. So you can just go to the Web and get it, and then pay for the transaction later. He doesnt have to worry about whether it will be cleared, or what it will cost. Licensing is all done through the Web. You dont even have to be a regular client to license the track; you just click into Aaccept and you become a one-off client for that track.
In addition to finding library tracks, the new systems now allow for faster delivery of original material. Some of our composers are not always in Los Angeles, notes Blair. One lives in the desert. But this allows him to quickly demo up a piece of music without having to drive it in here or Fed Ex it.
That helps in the international marketplace, as well, since there is no need to get the music cleared through customs. Even more importantly, Blair says that sometimes time frames are so tight, you just dont have time to set up Fed Ex services. They need it there yesterday.
Besides speed, there are exclusivity issues. Rosmann cites a recent show open the company scored for Ritmo Fox for Fox Latin America, produced by Foxs in-house agency. It was sound-designed and musically driven and they searched multiple libraries, she recalls. Then they found something in our library which we had just produced but hadnt put on our CDs yet. It was perfectaand we gave them a window of exclusivity for six months, which made it even more attractive to them.
More music houses should make unused or sample tracks available, adds Rabinowitz. Itll be great to have at our fingertips, to download it and purchase it. When I worked at tomandandy [as a producer], we did five or six demos for each job. All were really good and all were mixed digitally. Those should be available to be used.
Too Much Pressure?
Nonetheless, there are possible down sides to this brave, new world: such speed can increase expectations and pressure while possibly reducing creativity. Because everyone wants it right now, the time you have to create stuff is reduced, observes Molina. All the creative options get compressed.
Agrees Rubin: There is more pressure to create faster. I was doing a lot of scoring for video, and the same thing happens. There is always pressure, and that is a big part of the business. You just have to come to terms with that.
Some are less concerned, though, seeing it as part of the natural development of new technologies. I remember the first time I used ISDN lines to transfer material seven or eight years ago, says Blair. The agencies were shocked and thrilled that they could turn it around in 24 hours. Within one year, they became blase about it and almost expected a 24-hour turnaround. But I dont think it affects creativity. Sometimes, when you dont have time to over-think the creative, you can do better work.
For the future, most see things only getting faster. Corn notes that when cable modems first arrived, he had a 300-baud modem. Now we have 5600 baud. Thats amazing. Because of that, a lot more people are putting audio on their Web sites. And as bandwidth increases, it wont be as weighty a problem to put audio on the Web site.
In the next six months to a year, Corn predicts that things will be moving even more quickly, as increased bandwidth becomes more commonplace, and people become more at home with cable modems with higher bandwidth connections. In Europe, places are delivering music to high-volume users. Im looking at a European system that is 20 times faster than ISDN.
I see nothing but pluses here, concludes Tom Hajdu, CEO of tomandandy. Now, multimedia artists, which is what I like to call editors, as well as creatives on the agency side, will be able to be more empowered, and they will have more choices, more quickly and more easily. Were trying to create technology and software solutions right now that will free everybody up to move faster. The only negative is that were still trapped inside our bodies. We cant fly around the Internet as fast as our digital information. But thats only temporary too.k
